valor; and in the grapple I boarded them. On the instant, they got clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy; but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king have the letters I have sent ; and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine1 ear, will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England; of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell. He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet.

2

Come, I will give you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VII. Another Room in the same.

Enter King and LAERTES.

King. Now must your conscience my acquittance

seal,

And you must put me in your heart for friend;
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he, which hath your noble father slain,
Pursued my life.

Laer.

It well appears. But tell me,
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,

As by your safety, greatness, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirred up.

O, for two special reasons;

King. Which may to you, perhaps, secm much unsinewed, But yet to me they are strong. The queen, his mother,

1 Folio-your.

2 The bore is the caliber of a gun.

3 Quarto-Criminal.

Greatness is omitted in the folio.

Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,
(My virtue, or my plague, be it either which,)
She is so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her.
The other motive,

Why to a public count I might not go,

Is, the great love the general gender1 bear him;
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,3
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.

Laer. And so have I a noble father lost;
A sister driven into desperate terms;
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,*
Stood challenger on mount of all the age

For her perfections.-But my revenge will come. King. Break not your sleeps for that; you must not think

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull,

That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
I loved your father, and we love ourself;

And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,-
How now! 5 what news?

Mess.

Enter a Messenger.

Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.

This to your majesty; this to the queen.

King. From Hamlet! who brought them?

Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not;

1 i. e. the "common race of the people."

2 "Would, like the spring which turneth wood to stone, convert his fetters into graces." The quarto reads work for would.

3 "Lighte shaftes cannot stand in a rough wind.”—Ascham's Toxophilus, 1589, p. 57.

4 "If I may praise what has been, but is now to be found no more." 5 How now! is omitted in the quarto: as is letters in the next speech.

VOL. VII.

46

They were given me by Claudio; he received them Of him that brought them.'

King. Leave us.

Laertes, you shall hear them.[Exit Messenger.

[Reads.] High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes; when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return.

Hamlet.

What should this mean! Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

Laer. Know you the hand?

King.

'Tis Hamlet's character. Naked,

And, in a postscript here, he says, alone.
Can you advise me?

Laer. I am lost in it, my lord.

But let him come;

It warms the very sickness in my heart,
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
Thus diddest thou.

King.

If it be so, Laertes,

Ay, my lord;

As how should it be so? how otherwise?be ruled by me?

Will you

Laer.

So you will not o'errule me to a peace.

King. To thine own peace. If he be now returned,

3

As checking at his voyage, and that he means

No more to undertake it,-I will work him

To an exploit, now ripe in my device,

Under the which he shall not choose but fall.

And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe;
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice,
And call it accident.

Laer.

My lord, I will be ruled;

1 This hemistich is not in the folio.

2 First folio, omitting Ay, my lord, reads, If so you'll not o'er-rule me to

a peace.

3 To check, to hold off, or fly from, as in fear. It is a phrase taken from falconry.

The rather, if you could devise it so,
That I might be the organ.

King.

It falls right.

You have been talked of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality

Wherein, they say, you shine. Your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him,
As did that one; and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.1

Laer.
What part is that, my lord?
King. A very riband in the cap of youth,
Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears,
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness.2-Two months since,
Here was a gentleman of Normandy,-

I have seen myself, and served against the French,
And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
Had witchcraft in't; he grew unto his seat;
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured

With the brave beast. So far he topped my thought,
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,3

Come short of what he did.

Laer.

King. A Norman.

A Norman was't?

Laer. Upon my life, Lamord.

King.

The very same.

Laer. I know him well; he is the brooch, indeed,

And gem of all the nation.

King. He made confession of you;

And gave you such a masterly report,
For art and exercise in your defence,1
And for your rapier most especial,

That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,

1 "Of the lowest rank;" siege for seat or place.

2 i. e. implying or denoting gravity and attention to health; if we should not rather read wealth for health.

3 "That I, in imagining and describing his feats," &c.

4 i. e. fencing.

If one could match you. The scrimers1 of their nation,
He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy,
That he could nothing do, but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o'er, to play with you.
Now, out of this,

Laer.

What out of this, my lord?

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

Laer.

Why ask you this?

King. Not that I think you did not love your father; But that I know love is begun by time;2

And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,3

Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would

changes,

And hath abatements and delays as many,

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift's sigh,*
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:
Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake,

1 Scrimers, fencers (from escrimeur, Fr.). This unfavorable description of French swordsmen is not in the folio.

2" But that I know love is begun by time," &c. "As love is begun by time, and has its gradual increase, so time qualifies and abates it." Passages of proof are transactions of daily experience.—The next ten lines are not in the folio.

3 Plurisy is superabundance.

4 The reading of the old copies has been altered in the modern editions to "a spendthrift sigh." Mr. Blakeway observes, that "Sorrow for neglected opportunities seems most aptly compared to the sigh of a spendthrift-good resolutions not carried into effect are deeply injurious to the moral character. Like sighs, they hurt by easing; they unburden the mind and satisfy the conscience, without producing any effect upon the conduct."